EMICODE EC 1®
Controlling emissions - for safe flooring installations

There is a growing demand for reliable information about products and materials intended for indoor use. Consumers requ ire building materials and equipment that do not pollute the indoor air with volatile organic compounds (emissions) and odours.

This is especially true for products used for the installation of flooring such as adhesive, primer, levelling compound and underlay.


Previous attempts to assign test certificates to these products or to us e terminology such as “low emission” led to confusion amongst consumers. This was due to the wide variety of diverse standards and testing methods in existence .

A group of German manufacturers of flooring installation products founded the “Gemeinschaft Emissionskontrollierter Verlegewerkstoffe e.V." (GEV ), or translated “ Association for the Control of Emissions in Products for Flooring Installation ” . Its main purpose is to supply impartial, reliable information regarding the emission characteristics of these materials - thereby offering guidance to planners , consumers and craftsmen when choosing suitable products that will protect the consumer as well as the environment.

To achieve this t he product classification system EMICODE ® was created.

Flooring installation materials labelled with the GEV sign EMICODE EC1 ® "very low emission"
grant the greatest possible protection against indoor air pollution. The EMICODE ® system is based
on defined analytical test chamber procedures and strict classification criteria. These criteria have
been defined by the Technical Council of the GEV with the professional support of the environmental institute Miljö-Chemie, the Carpet Research Institute (TFI) and the Association for Environmentally-Friendly Carpets (GuT).

The uniform adoption of EMICODE ® by the GEV members provides traders with an assured standard when
selecting flooring installation products and in addition builds consumer confidence in these products.

EMICODE ® and GEV stand for compet ent and responsible protection of the consumer and the
environment.

Products displaying the EMICODE ® label are modern, solvent free, flooring installation materials
with the lowest possible odour . They guarantee excellent Indoor Air q uality and present the most
ecological approach for contemporary flooring installations.

Requirement guidelines for the awarding of the EMICODE licence

The flooring installation material mentioned in the front side licence has to meet with the following criteria in accordance with the constitution and guidelines of the Technical Advisory Board of the GEV and others:

  • The flooring installation product meets all the legal requirements, especially the chemical law and its specifications.

  • The flooring installation product is solvent free due to occupational health.

  • A safety data sheet (MSDS) as per directive no. 91/155/EWG and the updates to these directives is to be established for the flooring installation product.

  • Carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic substances as well as those substances under suspicion to cause such defects are not permitted to be used in the manufacturing of this flooring installation product.

  • The testing of the flooring installation product is in accordance with the defined GEV test methods. Afterwards the definition of VOC´s is conducted in a test chamber according to the VOC regulations tests using the Tenax thermodesorption procedures with GC/MS analysis.

  • The classification into the EMICODE classes is performed according to the following listed and described criteria and TVOC concentration groups. For product labelling the matching EMICODE class is to be used.

For further information please contact us by phone: +49 (0) 211/67931-20

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